


In Flames

by glenarvon



Series: The Demon and the Warrior [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gen, Mind Games, Sex, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 11:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16157888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: Shepard and Morinth on shore leave.(reposted from ffn)





	1. The Goddess

Morinth lets herself fall back against the window of the observation deck. The moment stretches and spins out of control before she hits the glass. Thrill shoots up her spine like lightning. Of course the glass can take her weight, there was nothing she could do to break it, but the impression was real and the exhilaration is right there with it.

The glass catches her, solid and cold from the void beyond. She lets her head rest against it, pushed a little until her entire body is stretched along its length.

Her mother used to meditate, but Morinth has her own prayers to voice.

"Shepard," she whispers, like an invocation or an unlucky charm that will bring him to her if only she believed it hard enough.

She squares her shoulders against the glass, ice travels down her arms with the promise of death.

She has long since wondered what it had been like for him, out there in the cold, alone and with the air running out.

Of course, she knows he will come here, sooner or later, she has been present at the briefing before docking at Illium. He wanted everyone off the ship while people contracted through Liara T'Soni cleanse it of every taint Cerberus might still have left on it. He was suspecting a traitor or a mole of some kind, despite everything he had done to save each and all of the crew, even if he had never spoken of it.

She puts her head to the side and breathes his name again while she thinks the stars behind her prick her like a million tiny needles and laughs a little at her own private little blasphemy. There is an answering hiss from the door as it opens and she laughs again, lower in her throat, watching him walk in.

He has shed that tasteless militaristic gear he usually wears, not unlike when she first met him in the Afterlife, where he played her own game better than she had.

Below the pale jacket, she can see the faintest, slightest outline of a gun.

"You look good, Shepard," she purrs, but the seduction in her voice is almost entirely habitual.

He is never going to give in, is never going to fall for any snare she might lay for him, but she still enjoys putting the proposal at his feet. After all, there is always a chance with someone for whom impossibles do not exist.

"You can't stay," he says, brushing past her words. Oh, but he knows it anyway, knows and calculates on what people see when they look at him: The nobody born in a slum who grew up in the streets; the Butcher of Torfan and the man who saved the galaxy twice — clothed in such magnificent flesh.

She curls her shoulders again, let herself slide a little along the glass, sideways, then down.

"Oh come on, you don't believe I'm working for Cerberus, do you?"

"I'm not big on belief," he shrugs. "You'll get in the way and I don't want Liara to catch onto you."

She fakes a pout. "You just don't want to share her."

"I just don't want to share her with you _and_ the Shadow Broker."

Morinth chuckles, pushes back up. "But really, I thought you would prefer it if stayed here. After all, you'll let me loose on all of unsuspecting Illium?"

He watches her as if imagining the unspoken implication. If she could, she would place the vision of an orgy in his mind, colourful and with all the debauchery of her varied life. As it is, instead, her world tumbles once more though only briefly, when his expression unexpectedly softens. The predator in him settles back from the forefront of his gaze, the ice and steel become less tangible.

"If you are done dry-humping the window, I have an offer for you," he says and he sounds playful, the smile on his face infused not only with genuine humour but also genuine warmth.

It is always worse, Morinth thinks, when he remembers that they are allies while she forgets it. She loses herself in the webs she weaves - it is part of the thrill - but for all the danger they can be for each other, they are on the same side. His life had been in her hand more than once, after all, when he had neither flinched nor hesitated to trust her. Of course, he can do so easily, knowing how she would never betray him on a battlefield. Where would be the gain in that? All that power and passion and ruthlessness thrown away and wasted on another pointless death? No, Morinth would - and will, she is certain - sacrifice her own life just to keep him alive.

She stops moving but remains with her back against the glass. She likes it like this. The darkness behind her has texture, she can feel it wrapping tiny tendrils around her, enveloping her; a coat of starlight fit for a goddess.

"Such beautiful words," she says, drawing out the words. "Such a promise."

"But I'm a liar," he counters calmly, letting the moment hang between them before it snaps, in the same inevitable way the glass has stopped Morinth's fall earlier. There is a promise here, but it isn't being voiced.

Morinth relents, shifts back to her feet and steps to the couch, slips down on it to sprawl, one arm hanging limply over its back. "Let me hear it."

"You said once that you used to be into duelling."

Morinth finds herself leaning forward in her seat, the studied sensuality dripping away from her as her eyes go wide with anticipation. She wet her lips, "You want to duel me?"

He walks forward, meets her halfway as she comes up from her seat, rising like a mermaid against a rock and brings them face to face.

"Don't think too much of it," he says quietly, almost croons as he does. "I say that to all the girls."


	2. Sleeping with Dragons

"You aren't doing this just to keep an eye on me, are you?" she asks, settled in the back of the taxi, watching the everlasting sparkle of the city compete with the clear, bright sunshine. She knows the answer, of course. All of unsuspecting Illium... even though it had lost its appeal long before her mother had forced her to depart it. Still, a large and varied world, someone would be interesting enough to rouse her interest. Someone... but Shepard is more fascinating by far and moreover, seems disinclined to get her out of his sight. With inner amusement she ponders what type of show she should give him.

She turns her head, intrigued for a moment, when by chance or destiny, the distant shadows of an unfinished skyscraper look like the Reapers' dragon's teeth, stark black against the luminous sky.

"I've never used a sabre before," he replies conversationally, looking out his own window. The taxi takes a turn and the light wanders through the empty space between them.

Morinth leaves her place, scoots towards Shepard leaning forward until her lips are close to his ear and she can easily follow the direction of his gaze.

"You can see it, can't you?" she asks quietly when the nearby building part again to reveal their distant, foreboding cousin.

Her skin prickles with his vicinity, close enough to touch, but she holds her body carefully without making contact. She doesn't know what he see in her, not always, can't judge what would push him too far. She isn't ready yet to risk his trust merely to find out.

He has to be seeing it, too, the familiar, disturbing form. It lasts for no more than a moment, than the angle changes and the illusion is lost before another building blocks the view completely.

"Combat-comedown paranoia," he observes, far from impressed and makes a tiny movement, too small for her to determine whether he is going to shift away from her or - amazingly - towards her.

Morinth chuckles and slips back into her seat. "What would it be like to see a Reaper fleet above Illium?"

"Good target practice."

She laughs a little. "What does it take to see you scared?"

This time, finally, he does look at her, fixes her with those amazing eyes of his for a silent minute.

"Maybe a blade at my throat will do the trick."

"Is that another promise?" she asks and adds, "liar?"

The smile, this time, is faint, teasingly secretive, but it barely lasts long enough for her to read it. He says, "There is a way to find out. All you've got to do is beat me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Sleeping with Dragons' is paraphrased from R. A. Salvatore's Road of the Patriarch. Originally, it's 'Jarlaxle slept with dragons'.


	3. The Edge

Shepard bleeds.

The cut is small, a thin line of split skin below the sharp arch of a cheekbone. Blood wells up minimally, just enough to form a drop to slide down his face. Morinth can't help tracing its progress with her gaze, it's all she can do not to reach out for it, snatch it away with her finger so it won't go to waste.

Her body reacts, disengages from her opponent, but the scene doesn't play real anymore. She feels it fall away and they might as well not be standing inside a semi-virtual environment within a fencing studio. Their blades are not blunted and they weren't asked by an attendant to wear a layer of protective clothing - which they both refused.

No, the blade is edged and sharp and it had moved through the still desert air in an arch, a few mere heartbeats before to slash across his face before he withdrew.

Shepard lowers his own sabre, moves back half a step and tilts his head just slightly. The blood draws a curve along his cheek.

She doesn't know why, but her gaze flicks away from the drop only to feel herself falling in his eyes. The red glow from the cybernetics implants has never been more intense, more surreal than now.

Mesmerised her attention snaps back to the blood, the sensual line it has painted on his face and the instant stretches and distorts in her mind. If her heart stopped now, if her breathing suddenly seized, she would not have noticed, unable to fight it or even to move.

And in that stillness, in that moment removed from everything, Morinth parts her lips as he does and nearly feels the heated tip of his tongue as he snatches the drop from the corner of his mouth.

Sometimes, she pretends she can read him. Tells herself that there is a connection between them he shares with no one else and she revels in the fantasy. They are bound by the secret of her mother's death and her own identity. The Council, the Alliance, Cerberus, they all have made use of his darkness, but neither has ever understood it quite the way she does, no one has _shared_ in it, not like this. But most of the time, underneath all that, she knows that Shepard plays in a league all his own.

The moment flees, time slams back with a force that almost made her stagger where she stands and the sand crunches under her feet as she shifts for balance.

She laughs, throatily and he shrugs.

"Takes some getting used to," he remarks casually and swings the sabre carefully a few times, as he had done when he had first picked it up. "Not my type of blade."

It is the truth, too. With the unfamiliar weapon, all he has to go on is his instinct and his experience to read his opponent and her capabilities and speed. She has seen him make beginners' mistakes, misjudging the range of his blade, the time it takes to bring it around. His fighting is flawed - how could it not be? - only that he usually adapts fast, covers his mistakes and she has not been able to make use of all the openings his inexperience has afforded her. Oh, except for that one slash, of course, and the wound is already closing as his enhanced skin repairs itself. No more blood, only the bright, slightly puckered red of the cut that is far shallower than the cybernetics scars on the other side of his face. She wants to touch those, too.

Morinth laughs again, puts her head back, just because she knows it exposes her throat. "I shall enjoy putting you through the paces again."

She remembers something else. "What is your type of blade, then?"

"Short, mean and dirty," he replies and falls easily back into a laconic _en garde_ stance.

She can't quite tell whether he is revealing something about his past and she has seen few vids to fuel her imagination. Yet, in the brief interval between getting into position and the electric moment their blades touch, a vision flashes across her mind. Shepard, some ten years younger, thinner and unhealthier under shabby clothes. The world in her vision is dull, blunted, everything seems worn. Perhaps the pistol has no clips, or is jammed; perhaps someone has knocked it from his hand, but the blade glitters surprisingly bright in the washed-out light.

Here and now, under obscenely blue desert skies, the sabres meet in a flurry and she forgets her media-infused idea of his youth. It makes no difference when he is right in front of her and all his history might as well have only happened to bring him to her.

She laughs, dancing with him over orange sands, remembering why she took up duelling so many decades ago. In the years since, she has told herself it was for the kill that inevitably ended it all. She was wrong, it has always been for the fight, for this dance of glitter and destruction. Perhaps she was rehearsing for this.

Just because she can, she feints. The same move that earned her the cut such precious minutes before. She feints and he is faster this time, moving aside and letting her blade slice uselessly through empty air while she is carried forward by the attack that never connects. She compensates, sees his riposte before it drives her back several steps.

She ducks away when he keeps forcing the advantage her ill-timed, transparent feint offered him. She laughs again at the joy, before she needs her concentration elsewhere. She has to focus on the pinpoint strikes, needs to parry and defend. He picks up speed slowly, growing accustomed to the weapon with every passing second.

She is losing, with each step she gives up a sliver of ground and initiative. She is losing and she doesn't like it when she can still see him make mistakes, misjudge the range of the strange weapon. He twist his hand into an awkward angle where all his strength is lost. She can't quite make sense of why she can't seem to make use of all the flaws she sees, however fast he compensates.

The sabre swerves past her chest, right above the collarbone, forcing her to arch her spine back just to avoid it. A real blade would have sliced her shirt and skin, this one merely leaves a stinging streak, invisible under her ruffled clothing. She hisses in anger. Has time, for a blinding, timeless instant, to wonder whether the imagined scent of blood might make all the difference. Then she lets herself fall, abruptly. They call her a demon in the legends of her homeworld and demons never play fair. She falls and snaps to the side with the same movement. She draws her leg close as she slithers past him - she can see him turn from the corner of her eye, but won't pay attention - extends the leg and snaps it back, against the hollow back of his knees.

Even if he has read her intention, with those angles, he never had a chance to avoid or deflect. He buckles even as Morinth regains her own feet smoothly and propels herself forward. She has no more than a handful of seconds, no time to appreciate the sight of Shepard on his knees.

She can't help the biotics that flare up along her hands, she is too lost in the thrill. She closes in behind him, brings the blade up and around, grips the blunted blade with her other hand and tugs it flush against his throat. She feels him go still under her hands, the dead desert air presses down hard on them and the only sound is both their breathing.

She leans forward again, as she has done in the taxi, but there is no more reticence now, pressed against him as she is. She can see the faint, fresh, red line of the earlier cut like this, doesn't quite dare lick it, only presses her cheek against his in the lightest of touches.

She says, "What was it like, dying?"

He gives no answer and she can't make sense of his expression at this angle. Subconscious blue sizzles past her face and down her throat before she can hold it in check. It feels like a caress.

"Well?" she prompts. Time has lost its meaning. She feels as if they had been like this for an eternity. "Were you afraid?"

He takes a breath, actually leans into the blade as he does, relying on the fact that even if it cut, it won't be deep enough to cause any real damage. He moves a little and Morinth permits it, if only for how it feels against her body.

Calmly, he says, "You want to know what it felt like?"

"Yes," she breathes.

Another slight shift from him, another answering jolt down her back.

_"Unpleasant,"_ he snarls and the hilt of his sabre slams into her ribcage so hard all the air flees her lungs and the pained grasp nearly chokes her. Her hands went limp, the sabre falling away uselessly as she recoils. She doubles forward as her legs give away and the ability to breath is lost to her. White-hot, blinding pain encompasses her, letting everything else fade.

Dimly she is aware of how he stands back up, holds his place not far from her, but offers no assistance. She doesn't expect it, not when it was her who changed the rules of fair-play to ambush him. Shepard doesn't appreciate losing anymore than she does.

Slowly, air returns to her cramped body and she struggles to her feet, seeing her weapon lying too far away even if she had been willing to make a dive for it to try and teach him a lesson. She straightens some more, lets her arms fall by her side and looks back at him.

He cocks an eyebrow and gives her a mischievous little grin. "I guess first round's mine," he observes, voice free of any rancour. As her vision clears she can see the glint of excitement in his eyes.


	4. In the Dark

Night has fallen on Nos Astra long before they find themselves on the way back. Liara T'Soni has arranged quarters for the entire crew, rented an entire floor of an apartment building for them for the week it would take to clean the ship.

The lights flitter through the taxi's window, draw meshes of light and dark across the space, shrinking it around them. It seems smaller now than it has earlier. Shepard seems closer now, when she can still imagine the feel of him along her body and it makes her skin tingle at remembered contact.

Her rips still ache, tiny flashes of pain shooting up whenever she makes a wrong move. In her mind's eye, she recalls the fight, sees herself once more flow away from an attack or charge into it and make sparks fly along the blades. There has been no fair-play, no rules between and no need for them. What rules would apply to a demon and a god? What authority would dare enforce them?

Today, they have been closely matched, nearly perfectly balanced talent against experience and Shepard has proved himself - once more and expectedly so - as brilliant a fighter as she has ever seen, or imagined to exist. His enemies were right to be afraid, but it would never make a difference.

She has fought him too, once, in a different world and all that is left now is the desire, the need for him. She cannot claim him against his will, for although closely matched in a real fight, now as well as then, she would never prevail.

With adrenaline still running high in her system, she shifts in her seat, leans closer to him. She holds herself still for a moment, a courtesy extended from one dangerous beast to another and she would have drawn back. Instead, the sidelong look he gives her is - miraculously - one of invitation.

She reaches out and traces a long finger along where the fresh cut that still faintly discolours his skin. She trails her finger down, the remembered course the drop has taken to the corner of his mouth.

He turns his head towards her, bares his teeth at her in a feral smile and says, "Alone."

She stops and he holds her gaze. He continues, "That's what dying is like. You are always alone. It doesn't matter that the galaxy around you is ablaze with beauty and bristling with life. You are dying and you are _alone_."

If wants to fall into his eyes, take all her power and drown in them, if she could, if he only allowed it. If she had a choice, she would stay locked in this very instant for all of eternity, until all the suns died and space and time folded in on themselves.

She edges even closer, drawn like an insect to an irresistible flame, certain of her doom but rendered incapable of fight or flight. "Were you afraid?" she asks for the third time that day. They say that three is magical...

He moves, for real for the first time, turns in his seat so he can face her fully and her breath catches in her throat and her heart seems to stutters to an abrupt, aching stop when he cups her face in his hands.

She sits transfixed, watching his lips, so deliciously close and he says, "I am never afraid."

He kisses her. Slow. Sensual. Dominating. The taste of the same hunger she feels for him, echoed, once more perfectly matched. Danger to danger and certain doom, for one of them, or both. She allows herself to melt against him, tiny spark of pain from her bruised rips dissolving into something else.

She has been wrong before. _This_ is the moment she wants to preserve in amber and diamond never to fade or vanish at all. Heat spreads through her, seeps through her skin, sinks past her bones.

Then something changes, knowledge and control fled before she remembers. Heat changes to cold and tendrils of power slither around her, around him. She feels his mind, as elusive as it has ever been, but this time she isn't trying to command him. No, this time, all the gates are open already, allowing her in.

He feels like cool water, an ocean at night, hiding monsters and storms. Her nerves sizzle and burn, lost in those dark dark seas.

Biotics have wrapped around his wrists, snaked around his chest and stroked his throat. _Now,_ she thinks. Now. She is so close to the precipice, she is going to drag them both over it's edge. She will have all his strength and passion and power, proving his better if he won't allow her to be his equal. She knows she has lied to him. She is an Ardat-Yakshi and her love, no matter how honest, can nothing but devour him.

He bites her lower lip, just hard enough to break her reverie. Just, she thinks dimly, hard enough to save his life.

"Shepard..."

Her muscles strain and protest as she moves away from him. She suppresses a shiver from her tensed nerves, can't bring herself to look at him. She doesn't want to kill him, not like this, not in some accidental, adrenline-fueled moment in the back of a taxi. When eventually she claims him, it will last, it will be perfect, fitting them both.

There is also the tiny voice at the back of her mind telling her that, if she killed him, she would forever deprive herself of his company.

Nos Astra still paints stark contrast across the charged air.

"Shepard," she says, again, some more strength now, but she knows her voice isn't as steady as she wants it to be. "You will have to let me kill."

It is still him she wants, but she cannot starve herself for an imagined banquet which might never come. Even as she says it, she realises that he will deny her. He is a killer ten times over, but this is something he can't share with her, nor accept.

"Not like this," he answers. She still won't look at him, her control is hanging on thin threats and seeing him would break all of them. His voice has gone quiet, she cannot tell for sure whether what just happened affected him at all, but she likes to think it did.

She speaks slowly, almost more to herself. "We must be what are, or we become our enemies"

He chuckles. It is a dark sound, whispering to her on some primal level that hasn't had a name since the dawn of time. "No argument, Morinth," he agrees, too lightly.

She goes still, suddenly, frozen in place as if paralysed by some greater beast. The irony isn't lost on her, but she has no capacity to dwell on it. His taste still lingers on her lips and there is the memory of cold, black water in her mind. She thinks she can hear the waves as they pound against the shore.

He says, "But I won't let you play fast and lose like you did on Omega."

She laughs, mirthlessly, "That's not what I was asking."

She nearly flinches when he touches her face, brushes his thump over the lip he has just bitten. It is a show of weakness she would not permit herself to show anyone else. He, however, understands exactly how little it actually means. If nothing else, she thinks, he appreciates the honesty.

"I know," he says. "But I like to keep my crew happy."

One day, she decides, she will no longer underestimate him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "We must be what are, or we become our enemies." quoted from A Song for Arbonne by Guy Gavriel Kay.


	5. Hunter, Hound and Hare

"La Lune Hotel, Suite 2049, booked and paid for," Shepard says. Morinth senses him standing right behind her, just out of reach, but close enough that his breath touches her bare shoulders. An anxious tingle runs down her spine, it is not exactly fear - he isn't going to hurt her like this - but he is still dangerous and he is in a place where she cannot see him.

She can sense rather than hear him move. He is leaving them alone, Morinth and the young man he has lead to her like a sacrificial lamb to a dark altar. Shepard adds, "If you want him alone."

She allows her smile to spread, teeth just showing as she appraises her prize.

Similar, certainly, though the idea shrivels and falls away moments before when Shepard still stood at his side and introduced him to Morinth. Shepard has had his arm intimately wrapped around the young man's shoulder in a gesture both possessive and feral.

Shepard leaves, vanishes into the jittery darkness of the nightclub and the similarity rolls back on a tidal wave. Broad shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, hips sharp-edged and bare above tight pants, a sparkle in his eyes full of secret promises.

"Come to me," Morinth says and he is already half enthralled with her. She reaches out her hand, finds the place where Shepard's had lingered before, pulls the man close and laughs as her pulse begins to quicken.

They writhe together on the dancefloor, lost in feeling and sound and movement. He has a history, though he is still young. He has fought, once, not so long ago. Fought and killed, but the scent of blood is faint on him. It doesn't matter. He is a gift, wrapped in red leather and black silk and she shall enjoy taking him.

At one point, he twists in his seat and scans the crowd.

"Your friend...?" he begins.

Morinth pushes a hand through his hair. It is too long, she decides, it covers half his face, nothing a trained soldier would wear, obscuring his field of vision like this. Still, she finds that she wants him alone after all.

"My friend," she repeats, she likes the sound of it. She traces a finger down his face, "He goes his own way."

He looks back at her, eyes full of want and it is an expression she has been beginning to miss. On the Normandy, her mother's skin is constricting her, when she has to playact the one person in her life she despises with everything she has in her. Even after her death, Samara still has that much power over her.

"So," he says slowly. "He won't be joining us?"

Morinth coos, can't resist it and draws his earlobe between her teeth. "I could almost think you didn't want me," she breathes.

He laughs at the absurdity of the notion. "Don't," he says.


	6. Ablaze

Morinth arches back above him. There is no light in the room save for the cool sparkles of the city outside, sliding unhindered through the wide windows. The light traces her body in silver through the thin sheet of sweat and she looks like carved from sapphire.

Power crackles in her veins, drives her forward again, down over him, suspended on her arms beside his face, watching his eyes as they flicker uncertainly.

He fancies himself a good lover and he is, too, but Morinth is neither human nor — when it comes down to it — merely an asari. She sinks her mind past his thoughts, wreaking his control, taking him apart and sifting through his memories of love and hate and fear and exaltation.

His voice has gone lost, but she can almost hear the vibrating tension from his body. His fingers still dig into her hips, still willing to play and no thought at all of trying to fight. She purrs, teases him with a kiss that isn't one. She bites his lower lip — in reference, really — and he grasps for air as his body shivers under her. His legs are braced against the foot of the bed, against the mattress, for support and the strength of his thrusts that hasn't faltered yet.

In this light — cold silver and colder blue — it is easy to believe the illusion. His hair has fallen back from his face and there are scars on his body from gunshots that were never treated properly. She pulls those memories forward, feels him shiver when distant pain suddenly mixes with the pleasure. She wonders, raking her hands over those scars, nails digging in mercilessly, if Shepard would be anything like this at all — in willing submission or not.

Sometimes, she likes to draw it out for as long as she can, wrestling with her own instincts before they burned her lovers and took her higher. But there always comes a moment when the drive becomes too strong, when the _need_ pulls her along as irresistibly as her companion.

Joined — _bound —_ this closely, she shares his feelings, his emotions. She feels as he is driven to ever new highs, shares it and moans with him. Higher, stronger and then the moment shatters and the pleasure breaks into shards of pain, ripping him apart inside and out. His body tenses like a bowstring about to snap, choking on his screams and his eyes wide and unblinking, locked and caught by her greater power.

Everything he was, everything he is, everything even which he might have still become, it pours from him. His heart beats madly — she feels it, her own joins the rhythm for those last few beats until it stutters to an exhausted, irrevocable stop.

Blue still dances over them both, crackling electricity, delivering pleasure-pain with tiny needles, tickling her skin, almost like a touch.

Across the room, where it is darkest, a tiny flame flares up. Warm, heated red among black and blue and silver. It blinds her, rips through her as a reminder and a pleased little thrill joins the tremors of the afterglow.

The world looks different through black eyes. Lights are brighter, darkness less tangible, but the contours of the room are faded, indistinctive. But movement is so sharp it is almost painful to watch, especially executed with such lethal precision.

Shepard circles the bed, a black shadow against the windows and the small red glow from his cigarette. He sits down by the bed — an expensive mattress in an expensive hotel, it barely registers his weight. He strokes one hand down her back and lets it rest against her hip. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and puts it at her lips.

She holds herself rigid for a moment, transfixed by the thought of how strange all this might be, if she were wont to question it. The smoke travels down her throat, a new, harsh taste, laden with the heat of its fire. A gift from Wrex, she recalls, and remembers the small metal casket gleaming like gunmetal in the harsh dust of Tuchanka.

Sated and mellowed she leans back against him, head on his shoulder, breathing the smoke, hating it a little for it masked his own scent. But perhaps that was the point. She can hear his heartbeat, though, feel the hard outline of muscle under his shirt and all the body heat radiating from him.

"You owe me one now," she says. "I have seen you kill, but I haven't seen you fuck."

"I don't do them in tandem," he observes and she chuckles. But really, she should find him an asari, square-jawed and thin-necked and with large eyes. She can see it, all she has to do is close her eyes. She will have to remember to leave the lights on, though.

She does not say, _perhaps you should try it,_ there are probably places he won't go, not for her, not for anyone. It makes playing with him more fun.

"We should get rid of the body," she says, dark eyes resting on the empty face on the bed.

She feels him shrug against her. "They won't bother a Spectre over one dead nobody."

It's true, of course, but this is Illium and, sooner or later, someone would recognise the telltale signs of this particular murder. "They would, over an Ardat-Yakshi."

He seems to consider it, he is not just any Spectre, after all. Easy for him, to simply take his chances, but Morinth knows the ways of her own people. He stands away from her, cool air rolls in to take his place.

Two long steps bring him to an armchair, where his jacket lies discarded, where his pistol is. He adjusts the gun, turns, aims and fires with the same smooth movement. Two shots snap like whiplashes, ripping the dead man's face apart. Splattering blood and tissue and brain matter, tiny shrapnels of bone splinters.

Heated drops smash against her still sensitised skin. She laughs, the sound rasps in her throat where the smoke already is.

A pity, rather, she thinks, looking at the ruined face. He was quite pretty for all that and certainly a treat. Sighing a little, she slips off him, flexes her long legs and settles back against the bed's cushioned headboard. She takes a drag from the cigarette, than takes it from her mouth, letting her hand dangle over the edge with it.

Black-eyed, she says, "Kiss me."

Shepard makes no move, perceiving the danger. If she truly hypnotised him, would he even notice? If she was successful, will he even remember fighting and losing?

He tosses the gun into the seat, crosses back to the bed, momentum carrying him. He doesn't stop and Morinth has a split second to realise that, yes, this is what she has anticipated right from the moment she had returned with her lover and found him there. That the passivity of voyeurism would do nothing but frustrate and annoy him.

He comes for her like something primal and ancient. In her mind's eye, from the heart of midnight, a storm-wave smashes against a shore, grinding granite into sand. She grasps, a tiny sound of sheer delight, slips down on the bed and Shepard's hand closes on her throat, crushing a drop of blood wetly against her skin.

She spreads her legs to the impersonal caress of cool midnight air on still damp flesh. Shepard doesn't choke, just holds her in that precarious place between threat and promise. He doesn't kiss her. She has given him an order, after all.

Heedless of the still burning cigarette, she wraps her arms around him, against the delicious pressure against her throat. She drives her nails through the thin fabric of his shirt and into the living skin beneath. Muscles move under her touch, pulled tight and tense. His breathing has sped up, smoke-scented breath close to her face. She watches his lips so close, feels the hunger well through her, but she can't claim his mouth without choking herself. And with that, a new thought comes to her, amid all the fever and jet-black seas.

If she kills him, if whatever she has done tonight has broken through to him, she will not simply lose a playmate, she will deprive the galaxy of its saviour. A man whom the krogan would follow willingly, to whose call the geth would rally and to whom the rachni - owning him everything and more - have pledged their allegiance.

Only this morning she has invoked the idea of a Reaper fleet above Illium and now the window through which she might see it - years or months or _days_ from now - is blocked by Shepard's black shade.

The thought sours her pleasure, though only lightly and at the back of her mind. She is still feels the effects of her other kills, still feels her pulse beat with an odd echo. Perhaps, just perhaps, she can control her own instincts. Then, as it has come, the idea flutters away and dies as the biotics flare up around her. She can't think when he is so close and so hungry. He runs his other hand down her side in a mockery of gentleness.

Tendrils of blue snake around his wrists, shivering with Morinth's anticipation and Shepard releases her throat. She hasn't realised how difficult breathing had become and her skin prickled with the sudden rush of it. She nearly shivers with the force of the feeling.

Both his hands have dropped to her hips, thumbs pressing hard against the insides of her thighs. He shifts forward on the bed. Blue snaps at his face. Free now, she leans forward until their lips just barely touch and her nerve ends spark like electricity.

Her nails are in his back, like hooks and she pulls. There is no blood, there can't be blood but he makes a tiny jerk in surprise and he hisses.

"Please," she croons, her voice empowered now even when she still wonders if she won't drown in him rather than the other way around.

Even as she speaks, she knows what a mistake it has been. She broke the spell and spooked her quarry. Shepard grows still. She is too close, but their lips still tease each other and she feels the slight twist, a smile or a smirk she cannot tell.

There is a flick of his tongue against hers, quick and heated, a barbed farewell.

It takes effort, she knows - she _feels_ _-_ for him to draw back this time. It dulls the warrior grace of his movements even as it betrays his strength. She has tightened her biotic hold on him for a moment and she could claim it was instinct, the attempt to rein in a quarry that was about to get away. He shrugs it away, not easily, not simply, but he does and she concedes the stalemate and takes her powers back. Not, however, without letting the wisps of blue whisper over him in what might have been a remembered caress.

It is still too dark to see him properly. Too dark to read in his face in the moment before he turns away, picks up his jacket and his gun. He turns around again, leans against the edge of the armchair.

"Don't beg me," he says and she thinks he is smiling. "It's a cheap shot and we both can do better than that."

"It nearly worked," she says. She feels drained now, satiated, too much so to mind that he was still alive and out of reach.

" _Nearly'_ s not good enough on this team," he says, becoming her commander again. He shakes his head in a show of disappointment, then tilts it sideways and adds, "I expect you to do better next time."

She laughs at that. At the thought of the war they are going to face and the man she has decided to follow. At the freedom, too, which he has given her with her mother's death. And, most of all, at the realisation that, yes, they are still playing.

"I'll inform the hotel staff to clean this up when you are done here," he says on his way to the door.

The room expands when he is gone, suddenly bereft of his presence. Larger and darker now, with unyielding streaks of white light across the polished floor that do nothing to illuminate.

Morinth sighs contentedly, stretches her arms out over her head and swings her legs over the side of the bed. She looks back over her shoulder, at the dead body on the bed. She feels no anger over the pale simulacrum she had been handed. There are games and _games_ after all. There is no reason not enjoy whatever she finds.

She steps across the room to the windows.

She finishes the cigarette, looking out over the cityscape stretching out below her. In her mind, she sees the myriad falling stars, tiny flickering lights go down in a firework of white and silver as the fragments of the Reaper fleet scatter and burn in the skies above Illium.

 


End file.
